


Cvm With Me, Cvnt

by escspace



Category: Noblesse (Manhwa)
Genre: Gore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Modern Ragar AU, Rape, Recovery, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22644622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escspace/pseuds/escspace
Summary: Ragar falls into the hands of the Union, and Urokai, plagued by a deep-seated grudge, thinks he can break him.
Relationships: Cadis Etrama di Raizel/Frankenstein (Noblesse)/Ragar Kertia, Frankenstein (Noblesse)/Ragar Kertia, Ragar Kertia/Cadis Etrama di Raizel, Urokai Agvain/Cadis Etrama di Raizel
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	1. Cvntbox

**Author's Note:**

> This fic assumes the personal Modern Ragar canon of Ragar having to honorably give up his soul weapon to the Previous Lord before leaving Lukedonia with Frankenstein to look for Rai after Rai’s disappearance.
> 
> Descriptions of rape may be graphic and uncomfortable to some viewers.

He wakes, the white, sterile, acetone scented world gradually sharpening until it chills him to his core and makes him squint against the harsh, uncaring lights. A strange weakness plaguing his limbs, Ragar slowly stands and peers around his empty, unfamiliar cell. There is a weight around his neck, and he reaches up to lightly trace his fingers against the cold curve of a foreign metal collar pressing uncomfortably against his throat. His first thought is to rip it off, but as he grips it, the dreadful realization that he _cannot_ squeezes his chest.

Mere metal and yet he is too weak to completely destroy it with a thought. Ragar quickly becomes keen to the fact that the accessory is not mere tasteless aesthetics, the weakness settled into his body not mere coincidence or vestige of a battle lost. His powers are limited, contained, trapped, crippled, the collar a new, novel invention that Ragar is surprised the Union, in its grandiose incompetency, is able to implement effectively enough to contain even a former clan leader such as himself.

He steps forward towards that phasing, sparking, luminescent forcefield separating him from the reinforced door of the bright room. Pressing his hand to it earns him a sharp shock up his arm and spine. The painful wall does not budge.

A mechanical whirr announces someone’s grand entrance.

Ragar looks at the white cloaked figure with a steady, emotionless gaze. “Urokai,” he greets, only polite.

Urokai’s lips lift cynically, a wolfish sneer. “Ragar,” he says in return, only disdainful. He exhales a casual puff of air. “Do you like the new accessory we gave you? Cute, isn’t it?”

They stare each other down. Ragar says not another word, holding Urokai’s gaze with proud, contemptuous defiance.

Urokai clicks his tongue, the sickle curve of his smile dropping with more overt viciousness. “You’re still so high and mighty—pretentious—even after you’ve lost…” He glances away at the floor, stormy memories and ancient grudges rolling just under the surface of his eye—long passed, faded into lost history, but he keeps them alive in his calloused heart. Urokai sighs and lifts his head. “We’ll see how long you can keep that up, _Sir Ragar_.” Abruptly, he turns and leaves. The door closes behind him dramatically, once again shutting Ragar off from the outside world.

Left again on his own, Ragar wastes no time attempting an escape. Taking a breath, ghost-quiet, he summons powers at his hands, surging and waking himself, but his strength fails him, like colliding with a ceiling far too low. His powers fizzle pathetically when he brings his fingers to the collar. He remains alone in that bleached, unforgiving cell with only the company of a security camera in a high corner for two days.

* * *

On the third day, his monotonous moments of nothing are interrupted by the slow swing of the door again. This time, there is a humble parade of four people: Urokai, Zarga, and two agents, one nervous and fidgeting, the other brutish and sharp.

Ragar, leaning coolly on the wall arms crossed, eyes them with hawk-like intensity. The door heavily clangs shut and locks behind them. Nonetheless, as soon as the barrier goes down to let the four pass through, he gives his best attempt at the exit, despite only capable of a fraction of his usual speed. Before Ragar can realize the world tilting on it axis, he finds himself slammed to the hard floor, Urokai looming over him with Dragus in his hand.

“Oh my…” Urokai sings. “Since when has a Kertia been this slow?” His face then hardens, mouth thinning into an unforgiving line as he passes a glance to the Union lackeys. “Strip him,” he orders.

Ragar’s eyes widen, and he scrambles to get to his feet only to have Urokai, embraced by the power of his soul weapon, crush him painfully to the ground, bending the bones of Ragar’s chest under the force of his foot. Dragus’ blade comes dangerously close to his eyes. “If you know what’s best for you, I suggest you not try that again and be an obedient little bitch.”

Behind Urokai, Zarga stands stiffly, glancing back and forth between Ragar and somewhere—anywhere else. His expression is tense, and his lips curve downwards in distaste.”Respectfully, Ragar, I encourage you to listen to him.” Ragar can see him swallow his nerves. “Let’s not make this...messier than it needs to be.”

Urokai nods at his lackeys, taking his shoe off of Ragar’s chest, and they obediently tear his clothes from him like hounds, starving for fresh meat, slamming him to the floor repeatedly in their roughness. Their hands on him have bruising force.

Ragar’s pulse hammers in his ears, his breath becoming short. A lump rises in his throat, and his mind swims with the dreadful, prophetic vision of what is to come. Too weak to ensure his escape, he nonetheless struggles loose to scramble away. His back, now bare, hits the wall, and it chills him ominously. Only the heavy collar remains to shield his form from the elements.

Urokai’s eye lights up, amused, and yet a strange, fermented fury colors his condescending stare. The corners of his lips quirk up. “Is this the form you show him every night?”

Ragar’s gaze flickers with confusion before it dawns on him whom Urokai refers to.

“Is this the shameless body you let that human fuck?” Roughly, Urokai forces Ragar’s legs apart with the flat side of his blade. He nods again at the two agents, and this cues them to hold Ragar’s arms and shoulders against the floor. Effortlessly, Urokai flips Dragus in a wide circle so that the dull end of the pole points at Ragar.

He is forced apart, penetrated by hard, merciless metal. It punches a breath out of him, and Ragar’s expression twists in horrified ways. His body clenches and screams for him to summon power, to summon blades at his side and fight and flee.

“And does he fuck your pretty little cunt like this?”

Ragar grits his teeth, feeling his fangs emerge. “Urokai, you are more foolish than I’ve ever thought possible if you believe doing this to me will earn you a place by Sir Raizel—“ He bites down on his words, the air escaping him as the pole suddenly pierces deeper, splitting his body. His hands and legs tremble and his eyes narrow.

“Shut up.” Urokai seethes. “Do not say his name. This is not about _him_.”

Pain sears his insides when Urokai roughly rips Dragus out of him.

“Do you think you’re so special, Ragar? Do you think you’re any better than any other weakling with a tight ass?” He looks away, snarling with unaware shame. “This—this is not about _him_ . He—Sir Raizel—he walked down the wrong path the moment he let that human into his home—he is...he is...nothing to me.” Urokai swallows down his self-loathing disgust, expression taught with self-righteous tragedy. “And you—you couldn’t help yourself around that human.” The pained creases on his face betray a deep seated grudge, an indignation, as if someone—or the universe itself—has stolen something rightfully his. “ _Oh,_ you must care about him so much to have left Lukedonia, your clan, your Lord, your soul weapon behind to follow him. And, after you’ve given up everything—after you became nothing—he still keeps you around? Well, he must care about you somewhat too.” His face sours. “Isn’t that sweet?” he growls. On his bitter face, his brows furrow, as if he is suddenly consumed by unknowable, dwarfing wonders he can never truly understand. Urokai’s voice drops into a mere whisper. “I don’t understand...Why him? Why you?”

A beat passes, breath-bated silence. Shaking himself out of his melancholy, Urokai resumes his sharpness. Detached and sadistic, he says to the agents, “Fuck him.”

Shock quickly passes over the expression of the brutish one, though he is more surprised than repulsed. “What? I thought we weren’t going to—“

Urokai shuts him up with a glare. “67, are you going to follow orders or not?” Then, he smirks. “This is your reward for working so hard recently.”

Zarga, an acidic look in his eyes, turns curtly away. “I’m leaving,” he announces.

Quick with irritation, Urokai grabs him by the arm, “What? You’re bailing _now_?”

“This is _your_ problem,” Zarga spits. “I have nothing to do with your petty quarrels.”

“Don’t be a bitch about it. At least help hold him down. Use your chains.”

Pensively, he looks at Urokai. Pathetically, he looks at Ragar. With no particular enthusiasm, Zarga summons his soul weapon into his hands.

The weight of the chains wrapping around Ragar’s arms and chest crushes the air out of him.

With a fluttering, perverse excitement, the other lackey looks up at Urokai with something resembling reverence for an old god and then quickly shifts his gaze down at Ragar, predatory, hungry. “We can really have him, Boss?”

Ragar grimaces in distaste.

The agent chuckles weakly, his fidgeting fingers flying to grab Ragar’s face and tilt his chin to the side. Invasively, he tangles his digits into Ragar’s hair, loosening it from its tie. “Haha...wow—I mean—I never thought a low life like me would get to have _a noble_ , much less a former clan leader like this one…” His smile is tilted strangely, off putting and possessed, and as he yanks Ragar’s face towards his groin, he exudes the scent of sweat, blood, and a burning, chemical bite.

Ragar does not look at the agent, a mere detached stranger, even as he forces his mouth open. Instead, his eyes, clear, passionate, burning, are fixed on the two fellow nobles, once fellow clan leaders loyal to the same Lukedonia and same Lord, peers and friends. Powerless as he may be now, Ragar knows their shame. He gazes at them with a placid, scathing judgement.

Zarga stiffens, his hold on his weapon tightening. He is the first to look away, but nonetheless remains where he is with his chains tightly coiled around Ragar.

“So fucking pretentious…” Urokai mutters. “48, 67, get to it already!” he barks.

“Ah, yes, right away, Boss.”

* * *

Eons ago, they called Lukedonia their home. Eons ago, Sir Raizel stood before his window in his home, alone.

The doors were always unlocked, and Urokai pushed them open with both reverent, outstretched hands. He walked through those great, silent halls.

“Sir Raizel,” he greeted respectfully when he at last found him. He smiled, softly optimistic.

Raizel only turned his head and nodded back in silence.

For a long while, that was enough for Urokai.

And then, there came a night when he arrived, a human, outrageous, stupendous, arrogant, and with the glamor of the devil in his crescent moon-witching smile.

* * *

The cock tearing his throat makes his breathing thin and ragged. Ragar squints in effort, feeling a potent disgust rise in his stomach, but he resists the urge to cough or groan, staying quiet with iron will. Despite the pounding ugliness of it all, he clings desperately to himself—his resolve, his pride, and his knowledge of those surely waiting for his return and surely searching for him; he carries _their_ pride as well.

The agent fucking his ass grips his hips with calloused, broad fingers and digs his blunt nails into his skin until blood smears all ten of his digits. Ruthlessly, he hammers Ragar, dragging with reckless abandon against his raw walls.

Ragar burns with an unsightly fire, not of pleasure or passion, but of a surreally enraged pity. He does not care for the unfamiliar, impersonal lackeys ravaging him in perverse ways and brutalizing his weakened and trapped body; they are strangers, careless, without history. Ragar’s eyes train on those he once shared fellow-feeling with. In long gone ages, they shared space during the Lord’s fanciful throne room summons. They shared worn dirt paths and benign invitations into each other’s lordly estates. In candle lit rooms, perhaps they talked about nothing, or something, or the other. It is all long gone now.

As Ragar looks at them, he can only pity their desperate, futile depravity.

Urokai snarls. “What’s with that look again?” He clicks his tongue. “Being fucked from both ends and you still act like you’re worth anything.”

Ragar thinks power is a coy, fickle thing. He has never seen Urokai more powerless.

“Oh shit—I’m gonna cum—“ The man huffs, his lips turning up indulgently, sickeningly. Shoving his cock in as deeply as it will go, filling the back of Ragar’s abused throat, he jerks Ragar’s head until he spills into his mouth.

As soon as the opportunity arises, Ragar turns his face away to spit onto the floor. His face burns and his eyes water but chills prick every inch of his skin. He cringes with a sourness reminiscent of bile.

The man’s expression falls, as if deeply offended. “What? Do I taste bad? Who said you could spit it out?” 48’s face darkens as he glowers. Fist cruelly twisted in Ragar’s hair, he slams his face down. “Go on, lick it back up like a good boy.”

Heavy, stale cum and spit, cold from the tiled floor, smears Ragar’s face and chin. He keeps his mouth locked, not a sound.

Urokai huffs in amusement in the background. “Who knows when you’ll get fed again, Ragar?”

Ragar only glares.

Urokai, too easily riled and plagued with impatience, shoves both of his agents away, clearing space for himself.

“Ah—I wasn’t done—“ 67 exclaims dumbly as he slips out of Ragar. There is blood on his thighs.

“Shut up. You can still jerk yourself off to him, can’t you?” Urokai huffs. “Zarga, make sure you hold him tightly; I don’t want him thrashing around and getting loose.” Aiming Dragus down at ragar, he says, “I think it’s clear that this so far has been much too mild for your tastes. It’s about time we have some real fun.”

The blade sinks into Ragar’s exposed belly.

Eyes wide and frantic, Ragar jerks, only further bruising himself against Zarga’s soul weapon. Turning his head to the side, he hacks up the blood filling his mouth. It runs down his lips and chin. His mind rings with helpless pain, his expression taught. Vaguely, he can hear 67’s appreciative groan as the agent pleases himself in his own hand, making lewd, slick, obtrusive sounds.

Urokai grins sharply, head held higher as if he is any more prideful and mighty than Ragar. He pulls Dragus out and then quickly presses the blade back into his ruined flash again. Blood sprays over Ragar’s skin. It runs and pools on the floor beneath him, warm and terrible.

“Do you let Frankenstein fuck you like this too, Ragar?” He snickers. “You love this, don’t you? You were always wagging your little tail asking him to spar with you back in those days.” His grin flattens with unpredictable quickness, and again long rotten contempt boils beneath his condescending countenance. “How pathetic…” There is a touch, flicker, a glimmer of sorrow—almost self aware—in his expression, but it just as hastily leaves.

Ragar grimaces, brows drawn tragically and eyes gravely wide as he looks at his gaping, bloody wound battling against his sluggish regeneration.

“Oh, my apologies. Wrong hole, isn’t it?” With a wet splatter of gore, Urokai withdraws Dragus. He spares no formality in driving the blunt pole into Ragar’s ass again and twists and thrusts it, unapologetic, ruthless, too fast for his victim’s body to adjust.

It scrapes and thrashes against Ragar’s insides, careless, beating his internals with the fervor and force of vengeance. Heartlessly, it dives into him with the intention of breaking him, of tearing him apart from the inside.

He shudders and grits his teeth. With momentous effort, Ragar resists the urge to squeeze his eyes shut and cry out in agonized, tortured ways. Instead, he looks up again, coldly, inflamed with insolence, at Urokai, gaze unbroken.

The corners of Urokai’s lips pull tight, and his knuckles pale with the strength of his grip on Dragus. Swiftly, he drills the cruel pole deeper, past all sense.

Ragar’s face contorts with blinding misery. He trembles with it. His mouth falls open in silent, gasping scream, and his chest heaves frantically for air, always struggling against his binds. He can feel his internals tear and shift. Again and again, he gulps, a body wracked with anguish, and yet, Ragar musters his defiant, characteristic silence, as skilled as a Kertia has ever been.

His body shakes in shock. His skin glistens with cold sweat. Blood oozes and spurts out of him and slides against Dragus as Urokai continues to drive it in and out, callously laying waste to his internals. All under the everpresent hard glare of the lights and the unaffected gaze of the camera.

Breath forces out of him, a greater weakness overcomes Ragar’s limbs and the world spins and bleeds into itself, blurring into nonsense. It shifts in and out of focus amidst his torture, and time bends in odd ways in his mind. Uselessly, his body shakes against noble-burning restraints, and Ragar finds himself wanting to simply exist in another place, in another time, far, far away. He is beside himself.

* * *

The grand House of the Noblesse towered stately and beautifully over him. Taking a steadying breath, Ragar reached out and knocked quietly and politely on the door. After a few moments of uneventful silence, he decided to try his luck again, slightly louder.

The door opened before he could finish. “I heard you the first time,” Frankenstein said. “Is it another fight today?” He smiled, high minded and knowing but willing to entertain.

Ragar nodded with soft, appreciative honesty, and they strolled leisurely together as they had many times before to their usual clearing in the forest.

His heart beat dramatically in his chest and in his ears, a friendly, energizing anthem, an indulgent thrill. Whenever they clashed, whenever he landed a blood-spraying cut or was bled in return, it was ritualistically precise and vigorously enthralling. They moved skillfully, faster than any eye could see. They danced to no music but each other and themselves.

Leaves shuddered, branches swayed, trees bent and broke and splintered in awe of their powers.

Ragar, invigorated, soared, invisible.

Frankenstein’s destruction, grand and sweeping, only pushed him to be equally if not more for the sake of it, for the beauty of it.

When they heaved for air, bodies bruised for their continued friendship, and dismissed their respective weapons, Ragar watched Frankenstein with refreshed appreciation, his pulse still leaping, his wounds still bleeding. He tugged at his mask—a nervous tick triggered by quiet approval. “It is remarkable, your rate of improvement, Frankenstein.”

Frankenstein’s lips curved upwards, a touch sardonic but eyes vastly and privately friendly. “You’re not bad yourself.”

“Hm.”

In the quiet privacy of their little corner of the forest, in the fresh thrall of blood and battle, the moonlight passed over them, speckled and kaleidoscopic with the shapes of leaves. In this humble, moon-witching space, they saw, perhaps for the first time, something gorgeous in each other.

Ragar knows what he sees in Frankenstein, but there are times he wonders what Frankenstein could possibly see in him.

* * *

He is only dimly aware of the lukewarm splatter of cum on his face and chest, the world like background noise to his half conscious mind such that even the pain raking through him is mercifully dulled.

A sudden swell, a wave, pulls him under and violently wrenches him back into the present and an all too sharp wakefulness. He cannot quite call it pleasure that overcomes him, surging through his body unbidden, but his muscles and insides clench and tremble nonetheless in orgasm. Ragar’s face scrunches with effort, biting his lip, refusing to give voice to the perversion of what should be sexual pleasure assaulting him heightened by frigid terror and numbing pain. He gasps and keeps his head low, struggling for air and feeling terribly cold and weak, like he should fall apart in the fashion of old, rusted children’s toys.

Blood cakes and dries thick and sticky on his face, abdomen, thighs, and ass, but each thrust and twist of Dragus into his viscera blooms agony and gushes with fresh gore.

Ragar coughs and spits up red mass. He has to concentrate to comprehend words spoken.

“I didn’t know nobles could cum. I’ve never seen one cum before. Let’s make him do that again,” one of the agents says, fascinated, though Ragar does not care enough to make out which one before his mind grants him the mercy of daydream again.

* * *

“Sir Raizel,” Ragar gracefully bowed. “I have returned with Frankenstein.”

“Indeed, Master.” Frankenstein, just as gracefully, if not more so, dipped into a bow himself.

Raizel, turning from the window, nodded at them both.

Frankenstein smiled gently, wonderfully warm. “I will prepare supper, Master,” he announced. Quietly and comfortably, he left the room, ever dutiful.

Before Ragar could turn around to leave Raizel to his privacy, Sir Raizel stilled him with a gaze and the gift of a rare, small smile.

Amicably, he said, “Frankenstein always insists on supper, even when I have survived for many years without food.” A short, fond sigh. “Perhaps you would like to join us, Ragar.”

Ragar blinked, taken aback. He smiled as well, reserved but giddy, and tugged at his mask, basking in the immense warmth of Sir Raizel’s well regard. He bowed his head. “Indeed, my liege.”

* * *

Aching everywhere such that he cannot even tell where one part of his body ends and another begins and unable to stop the tremors running through his clenched hands, Ragar finds his world again mercilessly sharpening and brightening as his head and chest slam into the floor, now streaked with a mix of cum, blood, bile, and piss. He twists his face away from it under the weight of a brutal hand. His chest stutters as he hacks up cum recently forced down into his perforated stomach.

“You’re disgusting.” Urokai scorns from above, distant from the vileness of it all, Ragar too dirty for him to touch.

Limp, clammy, and weary, Ragar still musters the strength to again pass defiant, unmoved judgment through his perceptive gaze, no less cutting than when they had begun this terrible, fruitless game.

Suddenly, Urokai dismisses his soul weapon. “We are done here.” he declares.

Zarga, finally, spares a glance at Ragar again, but he remains avoidant of his bright stare. He too dismisses his soul weapon, and the lackeys withdraw meekly in the face of Urokai’s tyranny.

Without fanfare, they shuffle towards the door in their miserable forms to live miserable lives in their miserable world, leaving Ragar dirty, injured, and ravaged monstrously on the ground.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and painfully pulls himself up to sit against the wall. Ragar watches them as they put distance between themselves and the pitiful filth he is left to wallow in. 

Before Urokai can completely be rid of his unsightly, blemished presence, however, Ragar speaks clearly and boldly, making certain his words are heard, daring the very heavens to strike him down if it is even able to. “I have complete confidence that they will find me,” he says. “And when they do, you will not be forgiven, Urokai.”

Urokai stills in the doorway, pristine white cloak untouched, deathly silent.

Ragar straightens himself further against the wall. His head held high, he is ever prideful. Even in his mutilated, soiled form, he remains steadfast, as regal and honorable as a Kertia leader ever was. “You have no one to save you.” This, Ragar knows.

“You’ll regret saying that…” Urokai murmurs. The door slams behind him.

* * *

The next few days—Ragar thinks they are days; there is no way to tell time—are a miserable, sickly, fevered haze of cum, blood, and any collection of bodily fluids and slamming, choking, and cutting, amongst other things.

Urokai and Zarga walk in with three men. Then it is four. And then five. Perhaps some come to indulge in their own perversions and power trips. Perhaps there are those who participate out of fear for their own safety if they do not. Perhaps still others are seeking a different reward in the form of a handsome paycheck for doing a good enough job of defiling a noble.

Detached, Urokai says, “I’ll reward the first one who makes him squeal.”

But Ragar never does.

Ragar’s objective is straightforward in these trying times. Stay alive. That is all he needs to do, because he already knows, without a shred of doubt, what is inevitable.

They will find him. He will return home. And Urokai will receive the respective reward for his actions. Ragar knows this, and so, for now, he keeps his voice low and his head high.

He is lying on the floor, wracked with tremors and exhausted out of his mind. Urokai’s looming shadow provides a momentary relief from the bright white lights glaring down at him without rest.

“Sometimes, I wonder just how stupid you are, Ragar.” A sickle smile returns to Urokai’s face. “Maybe if you weren’t such an authentic idiot, you wouldn’t be lying in your own blood, vomit, and cum.”

Miraculously, wonderfully, Ragar glares up at him, just as unbroken as before, and his lips curve in smile, revealing bloodstained teeth and split lip. “I am just stupid enough to know that you remain the loser of this game, Urokai.”

His head snaps to the side and his teeth chatter at the impact of Urokai’s kick to his insolent face. Ragar squints and steels himself against the ache it sends all over his ruined body.

When he is again alone in a room always too bright and too cold, he sits up and slowly gathers his frayed reality. His clothes, crumpled, torn, dirtied, still remain in a heap to the side, and he is too limited to summon new ones. His jacket, however, a well worn gift from Frankenstein years ago, is religiously folded and tucked away in the corner. He has tried his best to preserve it.

His torn muscles and fractured bones protest and wail every movement as he crawls over to his clothes to use what remains of the fabric to wipe himself clean as best as he can, but the caked, sticky feeling and scent of filth and rot still cling to him and weave into his long hair. Even banishing away such dirtiness requires a subtle reality bending strength he does not currently have.

Sighing, Ragar picks up his jacket and drapes it over his bruised shoulders. It is the only source of warmth he has in this desolate place, and he lies down, tucking himself away, to rest and recover as best he can before the door inevitably opens again.

* * *

A now familiar mechanical whirr stirs him begrudgingly awake, and Ragar can feel his stomach plummet at the anticipation of his regularly scheduled abuse. When his eyes blink open, however, he is curious to see only Zarga awkwardly stepping over to him.

Zarga clears his throat into a fist, not quite meeting Ragar’s stare. “I wish to clarify, I think what has been done to you is...in poor taste.” He reaches into a pocket on his white Union coat and pulls out a single daintily wrapped milk candy—White Rabbit brand. He hands it to Ragar. “That’s...for you. I…” Zarga presses his lips together, seemingly in deep thought as he swallows down whatever words he may have had. He abruptly makes his way back to the door.

Ragar throws the candy at him, and it unceremoniously hits the back of his head.

Zarga turns, eyes widened and perplexed.

“You can keep your petty guilt,” Ragar tells him.

* * *

“I got an anonymous incoming signal. They sent me some security footage, and I was able to trace where it came from.” Tao turns back to his monitors and the video flickers into motion.

Frankenstein steps forward, eyes beholden. His stomach both leaps and sinks. “It’s Ragar…”

Tao nods. He scrubs through the footage. “Huh, nothing seems to happen for the first fifty hours or so…”

Frankenstein holds out his hand, signalling for Tao to slow down at the appearance of four people entering the scene. “What…” His lips pull tight, and his hands clench so forcefully into fists, blood cakes under his nails. A sickness churns in the pit of his stomach. “What are they…”

A horror plays on screen—unspeakable and sadistic.

The air in the room shifts almost cosmically; it is soaked with a violent, silent oppressiveness, electrified with bloodlust. Frankenstein bares his fangs. His voice is quiet, just on the edge of hearing, strangled. “Stop…” For a moment, he is unthinking and unseeing. His blood is pumped by destruction; his lungs are filled with mania. For a moment, he wants nothing more than the end of the world. The devil, if there ever was one not created by man, sinks into his souls and reaches its burning cold talons deep into his palpating heart. Sickness rises in his throat, and darkness rises up his arms. “Stop... _STOP!_ ”

Air compresses and then rapidly expands, lighting in his silhouette—mindless, Frankenstein shatters the screens, and the glass cascades too loudly onto the floor. Brimming with the calls and celebration of the damned thirsting for fresh blood, he is unmerciful and unforgiving.

“Frankenstein…” calls Raizel’s miraculously placid voice, and it is just as miraculous that Frankenstein returns to himself, at least for a still, quiet, moment. But even beneath the apparent calm of such a voice brims and boils an equally barely restrained fury. Raizel lifts his head high, in his careful command the storm of his leviathan-rage.

“Yes, Master?” Frankenstein answers; the rest is silence.

Raizel looks forward into the black, broken glass, he, too, is blind, seeing nothing but sweeping destruction in their wake. 

“I give you permission to _hunt_.”

“Yes, Master.”


	2. Hell-hounding

The night air is crisp.

Raizel lifts his head and his powers, soaking the sky in red like it is the end of the world. “I do not stand before you as the Noblesse,” he begins. “I stand before you as Raizel, and I will sentence you as Raizel.”

The ground trembles, and heaven shudders. He is a storm, and Urokai gazes up at him, caught by beauty, dwarfed and possessed. Raizel—everything he has ever wanted. 

* * *

Urokai was no fickle creature.

He had been loyal century after century, darling and doting. It is the least he can do for his honorable liege.

When Urokai was only a child, barely the age of twelve, his predecessor was vanquished before his young, wide eyes, sentenced with a thundering vortex of blood that crashed into the ceiling of the Lord’s throne room. Sir Raizel, honorable and powerful, had saved Urokai from his own father’s vindictive clutches. When the blood had cleared, leaving only the memory of a clan leader in its wake, Urokai threw himself to Raizel’s feet, groveling and begging and thanking him for his duty with as much heart as Urokai’s little body could contain.

But even so, the boy still carried his predecessor with him, if not in soul then in teaching. He had been taught to bite, take, and mutate, taught that the humans were nothing more than potential servants, and if they  _ were _ anymore, they were monsters. By then, they had already spread mutant plagues across the land. For a long time, however, it did not matter what the humans were or were not; they were far away, and centuries later, Urokai forgot about them.

Sir Raizel, the just, noble, merciless Noblesse, whose judgment was absolute, and whose execution was flawless, was deserving of worship. This, Urokai knew.

The humans told stories of the so called Devil, who tempts and corrupts those once pure and perfect, and the Devil, of human stories and human made, had arrived on the shores of Lukedonia.

Urokai, who had always been adoring and dutiful, the youngest clan leader who had so quickly risen to power upon the execution of his predecessor, was swiftly and easily forgotten for a conniving, monstrous human, bold and insolent enough to demand residence within the highest house, the House of the Noblesse. His powers were both blindingly bright and pitch black, both disgustingly repulsive and wondrously magnetic.

Frankenstein was always there, stalking and haunting the halls, a crescent smile and sharp sickle eyes glinting with conspiracy. He would be the plague that would fall upon Raizel’s house and the rest of Lukedonia, their land, their home. And yet, Sir Raizel—honorable, wise, perfect Sir Raizel—welcomed him with uncanny tenderness, never once extended so generously to Urokai, the one who had honored and worshipped him for centuries. He was displaced, and the one who took his rightful place was no more than a strange, unfamiliar harpy, chimera, siren—a human, a stealer of noble souls.

The night Frankenstein took Urokai’s eye was the night Sir Raizel, for the first time, betrayed his own nobility. In his great judgement, he had saved Frankenstein, hardly giving the river of blood on Urokai’s own face a second glance. The second time Raizel betrayed his nobility was their contract. Frankenstein flared his cascade of stolen nobility from the pit of his soul, shimmering, arrogant, and vain. He had became Raizel’s bonded, and it was outrageous, stupendous, miraculous.

Urokai had heard the stories; they say the Devil is capable of miracles too.

* * *

“So you have found me, Sir Raizel,” Urokai says. His smile is slight, careful, and awful. He looks down and takes a deep breath, perhaps his final, and extends his hand. Dragus surges through him and whispers to life in his grip. The blade slices the air in a wide arc, dramatic and pointless. “I suppose it is only appropriate I fight for my life then…”

Without another word, Raizel extends his hand, and from it blossoms blood, roaring and relentless as his amorphous wings take shape.

“You’re...really going to waste your life force on me?” A bitter chuckle slips from Urokai. Quietly, to himself, he says, “The first time you look at me after all this time, and all you have is contempt…”

* * *

“You are always with him—Frankenstein,” Urokai said to Ragar. They walked side by side on the same dirt path under the canopy of leaves. Sunlight shapes shifted over their features.

Ragar tossed a small, pink fruit in the air and then caught it again in time to his leisurely step. Then, he looked down and delicately picked at the pebbled skin, working away to reveal its soft white flesh. “Hm,” was his only response, a simple affirmative.

“Why? What do you get from him?”

Fruit peeled, Ragar held it up to the light between two careful fingers, revealing its slight translucence. “I get this fruit,” he said, only further perplexing Urokai. He held it out to him. “It is a lychee. It is sweet.”

“I don’t want it,” Urokai refused flatly.

“Unfortunate.” Ragar withdrew the offer, and then quickly pulled his mask down to toss it into his own mouth. After a second or so, he turned to spit the dark, shiny seed onto the earth. “I remember to spit out the pit now,” he informed rather proudly, tugging at his mask.

Urokai watched this all with a dumbfoundedness unfamiliar to him.

Ragar, noticing his troubled stare, sighed quietly, vaguely pleased expression dampening as he looked ahead again into the distance as they slowly came upon the shape of Urokai’s home. “Simply, Urokai, I enjoy his company and his person. I do not have to  _ ‘get’  _ anything from him.”

“But he is human.”

Ragar stilled, stopping in his tracks. For a moment, all tenderness fell from his face and was replaced by a cynical edge. “Urokai.” He turned to face him. “Being human does not diminish Frankenstein’s qualities.” Softly, he shook his head. “No, I should say he is even more impressive because of it.” Ragar turned forward, continuing to walk. “I do not understand your animosity for him. Is it your eye? Are you humiliated, Urokai, to have been caught off guard by a human?”

Urokai stiffened. His lips thinned into an angry line.

“You should not be,” Ragar reassured him, an infuriating genuineness in his now softened tone, as if he truly meant every word he said. “He is as capable as any of us. And now with the bond to Sir R—“

“Do not—!” Urokai snapped, flaring uncontrolled, before immediately biting down on his outburst. “I...It is a surprise to me, the contract…”

Ragar assessed him with a long, hot, uncomfortable gaze. “Hm,” he hummed, turning forward again. His hair swayed with the slow, wisened shake of his head. “I am not surprised by it. I think it is only expected.”

“How can you say that?”

Ragar considered for a moment in easy silence before answering, “From my time with them, they appear to be...remarkably the same…”

“What?” Urokai face creased harshly, lips pulling with a barely restrained grimace. “That is...there is no way that is possible…”

“We have arrived at your home,” Ragar announced. He turned and nodded, politely, curtly. “I will leave you here, Urokai,” he said, and then began to stride away.

“Is your home not in the other direction, Ragar?”

“Sir Raizel and Frankenstein will be expecting me for supper.”

Ragar disappeared before Urokai could get in another word, but he stared, mystified, at the empty space where he had stood. It appeared as if Urokai had been deserted.

* * *

Power, as grand as perdition, fractures the earth. Urokai is shoved down and driven into the ground, taking the brunt of the attack with Dragus held in front of his chest. He already knows he will lose, and it is like waking up in ice cold water when he realizes that he knows.

He struggles to his feet and stares up at Raizel’s perfect, ruined form, radiating power like sun and godhood in the sky, utterly, completely, uncaring. He wonders where all his tenderness has gone. Urokai smiles dismally, now beaten and bloodied, as he feels the world turn its back on him, leaving him to rot in the cold in his lonesome. “There is no way you could have found this place…” he begins to wonder, only delaying his inevitable demise. “Only I and Zarga…” It dawns on him then, what has happened. He lifts his head, eyes wide and trembling, overcome by the cruelty of the world before him. The closest thing he has ever had to a friend, and Zarga, too, has betrayed him, deserted him, and he is truly alone.

_ No one to save you. _

Urokai holds out his hand and unfurls his fingers. Dragus disappears. He lowers his head and laughs joylessly, hair obscuring his face. Voice tight, on the verge of cracking, he pleas, “May I ask you just one thing, Sir Raizel?”

Raizel reigns in his sweeping powers, poised to decimate.

“Do you hate me?”

A long silence follows. And then, Raizel says, “I do.”

“Good.” Urokai grins. “That’s good...You should.” Then he laughs again, pained and defeated in his own misery.

Raizel brings down the force of heaven upon him, and his laughter dies with him.

* * *

Frankenstein rounds the corner of the hall, hounding and electrified, claws and fangs aching for the fresh spill of blood. The floor of the facility blackens in his blazing trail, and he breathes with pounding, blind malice. It thrums in his veins and burns him beautifully wherever Dark Spear reaches. Those few bumbling agents attempting to get in his way are expeditiously and impersonally drained of all life without even the opportunity to cry for mercy.

Zarga throws his blade back in the narrow hallway. “You don’t understand—“

“No, I think I understand perfectly well.” Frankenstein’s scowl mutates into a fanged snarl, all pointed and hungry teeth ready to tear apart all in his path.

“I was the one who—”

“I don’t need to hear it!” A crest of darkness shatters the walls as it hurtles towards Zarga and crushes him under the welcoming wails of the damned.

Darkness has crawled up to Frankenstein’s face, and all he can comprehend is a desperate cheering for more destruction. He trembles with his terrible lover’s power, embraced and seduced. He sees Zarga before him, and cares not for what he has to say; he can barely hear him above the parade of souls swarming and buzzing, sighing and screaming within him. So Frankenstein submits with eager fervor, scrambling towards a different kind of climax. Hatred and hunger become indistinguishable to him.

At the impact of Zarga’s red noble powers, at the slice of his chained blade, he is only spurred on.

Unheeding, Frankenstein’s intimate darkness floods the halls, paints the floor, walls, ceiling, and he feels his consciousness spread thin across his many, many souls. They clamor and call for more and more. Then, all of them and their many, many unseeing eyes turn upon Zarga, small and trapped in their horrid, cosmic space, their little pocket of universe.

Frankenstein drives Dark Spear into him.

He is taken up, and taken in, hastily, food for the ever-starving, not even enough meat to fill the gaps in between their teeth.

When silence settles in the wake of their collective violence, Frankenstein bows his head and sighs away Dark Spear, again tucking them deeply within his soul. They whisper contemptuously away, frenzied with the new piece to themselves, and darkness sheds from Frankenstein’s skin. Blinking himself awake, Frankenstein peers around the silent, bloodied hall. Hurriedly, he seeks Ragar, his long legs carrying him almost to flight.

* * *

Ragar’s eyes open at the sound of the door again, and vaguely, he wonders if he will have to spit out another mouthful of piss, but as his world focuses, he recognizes the silhouette dashing over to him. His eyes blink wide, and shakily, he lifts himself up to sit, his dirtied, bare legs tucked under him. The jacket slides slightly off his shoulders revealing renewed wounds.

“Ragar—Ragar—“ Frankenstein frantically kneels before him. He reaches out, not quite knowing where to place his hands as they hover just over his form, as baffled as Frankenstein himself at his state. “I——They...“ His chest is squeezing and breathless, his eyes swimming all over Ragar’s body. “Oh—“ He breathes out roughly, an attempt to steady himself, his face twisting in ugly ways.

Ragar hesitantly reaches up to smooth down his own hair. “I...apologize for my appearance…” he says.

Frankenstein’s eyes snap to his. “No. No. You’re—“ He swallows, mouth tight and rueful. Reaching out to take a hold of the collar, Frankenstein flares with power. It breaks pathetically at his touch, and the pieces fall heavily to the floor. Firmly, he sets his hands on Ragar’s shoulder and against his arm. “ _ Oh my god...Ragar,” _ he utters, eyes still roaming his body, cataloguing his wounds and his violation. His expression contorts with barely restrained tragedy. A dangerous, trembling fury boils just under his skin, his breath strained with it, his words cut and stilted by it.

Feeling his powers return easily to him, Ragar lowers his gaze, and with a touch of concentration, he cleans himself. Familiar clothes wrap around his body again, covering him from mouth to toe. On the outside, he finally resembles himself. He stands with smooth, precise grace, startling Frankenstein back, and steps towards the door.

Frankenstein hurries to rise and step after him. “Ragar...you’re…”

He shrugs on his jacket. “I am fine.” His voice is precisely emotionless, precisely flat. Ragar does not turn to look back at Frankenstein in the eyes, keeping his gaze trained carefully ahead. “Let us go home,” he says, as if nothing at all has ever happened.


	3. Come With Me

“Um...welcome home!” Takeo gently cheers with a careful smile that quiet night. “We’re glad to have you back.” He smiles broader, as if to beam his good fellow feeling towards Ragar, a friendly attempt to inundate him with respectable kindness.

Ragar nods graciously. “I am pleased to return,” he says, placid and unaffected.

“There is...dinner on the table, if you would like…”

Ragar’s masked smile makes an enduring effort to reach his eyes. He musters his usual genuine earnesty; in the back of his mind, he wonders if he is convincing enough. He nods. “Thank you…”

He is slightly numb to the compassionate squeeze on his slender shoulder, Frankenstein’s hand warm and steadying.

Once they all gather at the table, as if it is only another benign evening—business as usual—people take their places with aggressive normalcy. Perhaps all of them are privately reassuring themselves that it is all perfect now: the food hot and delicious, the lights tasteful and romantic, the household all accounted for. But, somehow, dinner is cold and tense, conversation struggling to stay alive before giving up entirely, replaced by a watchful silence and the dreary scrape of silverware against someone’s plate.

Ragar can feel the gazes on him, assessing him, picking him apart all over again. They must wonder, _what did they do to you? Are you alright? How can we help?_ They must wonder, _Did they make you bleed? Did they make you cry? Did they make you cum?_ They must look at him and see everything that is not right in him.

Ragar’s own bowl of rabokki noodles remains barely pecked. “I am alright,” he answers for them, breaking the silence like a deep crack in the glaciers. He looks down again at his food, delicately picking a small piece of it up with his chopsticks. “Please do not let me trouble your meal,” he says but can only swallow a couple mouthfuls before setting his chopsticks down with a sudden soft clink on the table. Raising his hand to cover his mouth, Ragar slightly furrows his brows. He tries to swallow the dull lump in his throat, eyes concentrated on the generous, familial buffet laid out painstakingly before him.

“Ragar…” Frankenstein quietly calls, setting his own chopsticks down. He presses his lips together, mouth terse and tight. “You do not have to force yourself to eat.”

Sickness constricts his insides. Ragar looks down, and his chair scrapes against the floor as he pushes himself away from the table. “My apologies...Please excuse me,” he says as he stands. “Enjoy your dinner.” With practiced silence, he slips away into his room and locks the door.

Dreamlike, he lays down on his bed and stares up at the ceiling. He knows this is his home and his bed and his body, but there is a strange distance between him and all the things he currently inhabits. He hears the quiet hum of the heater and feels the soft downiness of his clean, fresh covers. He is here, not there, and yet, Ragar feels no more real than a puppeteer, extending limp arms and limp strings to a strange body in a strange room in a strange house, none of which really belong to him. Alone, his existence feels borrowed.

Then, methodically, he turns over, burying his chin and pressing his shoulders into the pillow, and his hands snake down on his body, touching places he knows should normally bring him pleasure. His fingers slip past his waistband, and he feels his cock tucked in between his legs. He closes his eyes and thinks of pleasant things, of pleasurable things, of Frankenstein and Sir Raizel taking care of him in their unmatched generosity. Of sweet, warm embrace. He clings onto these thoughts fervently, but violence and godforsaken, awful memories are still too fresh on his body, and those pleasant things are chased away by the chill that sinks into him.

Ragar squeezes his eyes shut tighter, wanting to teach himself again that sex feels good and is done with good people who are nothing but good to him. But as his cock refuses to rise in his hand, he feels the onset of a mocking, intimate despair. A noble body is under fine noble control, but his own stubbornly rejects his efforts and remains impotent. Finally, he sighs, rolls onto his back, and gives up, futilely, pointlessly drained. Ragar swallows down his thick anxiety.

He drifts listlessly, no one and nowhere, until the sun rises in his window the following day.

* * *

With ritual ease, Frankenstein places the filled teacup onto the table in front of Raizel early in the morning and stands respectfully by him. Their silence is somber.

Each second stretches into eons, heavy and sullen. Finally, Frankenstein speaks, “I don’t know what to think…” He lets out a slow, haggard breath. “I don’t know how to make it better…I should have been there for him.” His hand runs through his hair, fluttery with anxiousness, weak with dread. “Why—Why did I—I should have never let him go alone—”

“Frankenstein...” Raizel looks up at him, understanding, calm, but both of them know that he does not have answers either. He only pats the seat next to him, offering closer companionship, and Frankenstein accepts. Raizel looks longingly into his tea. “I believe it is obvious you are not to blame for this...but I...do not know how to make this better either.” He smiles bittersweetly, sorrowfully, like it is the tender end of the world. It is an infinitely gentle smile.

Frankenstein’s expression sharpens, venom laced. “I’d kill those two again if I could,” he spits.

After eons more, Raizel closes his eyes, his presence and senses extending to the rest of the house, keen on the gentle press and pull and flickers of colorful life under their shared roof. Slowly, he opens them again, withdrawing into himself, and turns to face Frankenstein fully. “Ragar will need you soon.” It is a touching command, one with the sensitivity and compassion of deep rooted family.

Frankenstein nods and stands from his generously offered seat.

* * *

Ragar strips down, piece by piece, jacket, shirt, belt, pants, slippers. He arranges the articles neatly on the white bathroom counter and stares into the tall, wide mirror at his bare form, unmarked and flawless as the day he had manifested into this world. Tenderly, he traces his fingers along his sides, his shoulders, his arms, as if counting all parts of himself to make sure that he is all there, where he should be. He appears real enough. 

Opening the sliding glass door, Ragar tentatively steps into the roomy shower and turns it on. Scalding hot water rains on him, washing and washing away his sins, whatever they might be. His skin reddens, and steam quickly obscures the glass shower and mirror with white fog, hiding him from the rest of the world.

Vaguely, he wonders if Frankenstein will notice an unusual bump in the water-bill caused by washing himself like this, but nonetheless, his eyes slowly slip closed in private indulgence. He sighs, and the warmth of steam fills his lungs. The water patters gently on his skin, and it runs down into the drain, dragging along with it the deep ache of memories violent, cruel, and violating. He drags his fingers harshly against his skin, leaving disappearing trails, as if doing so will help him shed himself away and be renewed, but it does not, and he is left with only himself rubbed raw. Slowly, Ragar leans an arm against the dark gray shower tile and tilts his head down, long, wet hair clinging to his face, shoulders, and back. He reaches a hand up to his face, covering his mouth and chin with his fingers as his mask would usually do. He is too bare, too exposed. It becomes all too much.

His face is hot, and the corners of his eyes sting, his vision blurring, glossed over with the threat of tears that wash away under the constant caress of water. He feels phantom-touches on his body, unwelcomed, haunting, and a foreign part of his history. At last, tucked away within the walls of their home and embraced by the warmth of water and belonging, he is safe enough to break, even if just a little.

His chest constricts; he is short of breath, gasping. Coherent thoughts flee his mind, and he grasps at them like wind slipping through his fingers. Ragar feels nothing and knows nothing other than the need to cry and cry. Even the screaming that rips through his lungs and throat is dulled to his ears. He is out of time and out of place, crying out all that he had so pridefully denied himself back in that bleached, cold, unforgiving cell, torn apart all over again.

He is hardly aware of the banging and shouting at his door. “Ragar!? Ragar! I’m coming in!”

Then, there is Frankenstein, shoving open the glass shower and stepping inside, heedless of the water now soaking his hair and clothes. “Ragar,” he calls, voice above the shower’s patter and slowly subdued wailing. He pulls them together.

Ragar squirms slightly in his hold before stilling, realizing the safety of his companion. He gasps, chest heaving as he rests his forehead onto Frankenstein’s shoulder. Softly, he groans as he dimly returns to himself. Piece by piece, he relaxes.

They stand in silence for a long while, knowing only the sound of raining water and the comforting press of each other’s bodies. Gentle and tragic, Ragar wonders if they can stay like this forever.

He swallows, feeling a rawness in his throat. “Your clothes...they’re getting wet…” Ragar murmurs, sorry, mundane.

Frankenstein sighs, chest rising and then falling deeply. Uncountably tender, he smiles with the sad sweetness of everything wonderful and awful in their great, wide world, expression as somber and embracing as the gaze of the silent full moon. He offers, “What do you want to do today? We can do anything...”

Ragar does not quite know how to answer. His mind too frayed and bewildered to call upon any item on his sappy, romantic wishlist of mundanity inspired by petty romantic comedies, glossy advertisements, and countless movies over the years. Peacefully tired, he stays silent, tucking himself further into Frankenstein.

“You like the aquarium, the zoo, the ferris wheel, the cafe...the theater…” Frankenstein lists, a gentle, soothing hum in his chest as he reaches up to stroke Ragar’s silky hair with his fingers, easily untangling it and brushing it back. “We can pick out new clothes...eat ice cream…karaoke...drinking...the beach...a long drive…”

Ragar’s eyes are lidded. He lets out a long soothed sigh, shoulders slumping. “...I wish to rest.”

“That is a perfect decision,” Frankenstein tells him.

* * *

After finishing the pot of tea on his lonesome, Raizel picks up the various pieces of porcelain one by one and puts them on the tea cart again. The plate of cookies, however, remain unfinished, and those left, he takes to Ragar’s room. Carefully, he opens the door—the lock now broken—and peers inside.

Ragar slumbers, lying on his side, his long hair down, brushed smooth and laid elegantly under him. 

Frankenstein lying behind him, arm intimately laid over Ragar’s waist. He opens his eyes as Raizel walks into the room and nods in greeting, judiciously keeping still and quiet. Raizel nods in return and sets the plate on the bedside table before taking a seat on the edge of the bed.

 _He is very tired,_ Frankenstein thinks to him. _Ragar’s been exerted so much, and he hasn’t slept since—I’m not sure._

Raizel nods.

_Am I correct in assuming you will not be attending school today, Master?_

_You are correct._

_I’m sure the children will help you catch up on material missed._

Fairy-like, as cautious as a deer, Raizel too lays down on the bed, facing Ragar.

They slumber the day away.

* * *

Ragar wakes to the smile of the moon hinged on the apex of the sky. When he opens his eyes, Raizel is looking back at him, patient and observant. He feels Frankenstein’s hand on his side, and Ragar reaches to brush his thumb over Frankenstein’s knuckles, wordlessly informing him of his wakefulness.

“How are you feeling?” Frankenstein asks, voice a mere hush against his neck.

Ragar considers for a moment. “I would like to eat,” he decides.

Raizel rises gracefully, the sheets shifting and creasing under him. He reaches over to the plate of cookies, delicately plucks one, and makes an offering to Ragar.

“Sir Raizel…” Ragar sits up as well, curtain of hair cascading. He bows his head. A grateful, weighted “Thank you” is only appropriate as he accepts the treat. Ragar’s gaze lowers with maiden bashfulness as he pulls his mask discreetly to take a bite.

“Perhaps we would like to go out together tonight,” Frankenstein suggests.

* * *

The chilled night air ushers them into the retro-styled diner, still open at this late hour with its neon script lights winking at them, a piece of glamorized vintage America imported into the heart of Seoul. In bold, whimsical font are the words “HOT DOGS,” “BURGERS,” and “SHAKES,” hanging on the wall behind the service counter. The polished jukebox in the back completes the atmosphere of movie magic, and a small, wrinkled woman smiles at them as they walk in and take up a shiny booth by the window. Raizel and Ragar sit next to each other while Frankenstein sits across from them. They are the only customers at this hour.

The menu has the classic trappings of fries, burgers, hot dogs, wings as well as a humble selection of Korean comfort food and stews. After a small scene depicting Raizel’s characteristic indecision when it comes to choosing something for himself, Frankenstein eventually orders, “Three California burgers and the bacon cheese fries with sour cream”—a messy affair.

Their food arrives with amicable swiftness, and as Ragar picks the onions out of his burger with a fork, he is reminded of decades past—of late night drives and fast American food with classic rock and romantic ballads on the radio. Romanticized and galvanized, he had travelled the world over with Frankenstein in search of Raizel, and America had been one of their many pit stops, food and drink always bountiful.

Suddenly, Frankenstein calls out to the lady, “Madam, can we use the jukebox?”

“Of course!”

Frankenstein nods. He slides out of his seat and strides across the linoleum tiles to reach the music machine. After some fiddling, Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” blossoms from the jukebox and paints the diner with a glowing, nostalgic moodiness. _“Are you lonesome tonight...Do you miss me tonight…”_ Elvis’s voice like slow moving satin ribbons winding through the atmosphere.

Frankenstein slips back into his seat. Carefully, so that he does not dirty his fingers or sleeve, he jams his fork into a few fries that drip indulgently with melted cheese.

Raizel has cleanly cut his burger in half—whether by knife or by psychic powers, no one truly knows—and Ragar has already taken a bite out of his own. Carefully quiet, Ragar sighs to himself as he indulges in comforting food and company, and the trio of late night delinquents are understandingly wordless as they enjoy their food to the sounds of Elvis’s deep, velveteen voice.

“Perhaps we’d like dessert?” Frankenstein smiles warmly.

“I would like dessert,” Raizel agrees.

“I would like dessert as well,” Ragar concurs, tamely emboldened.

They order three milkshakes: strawberry for Frankenstein, chocolate for Raizel, and vanilla for Ragar. Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life” comes up in the queue as they receive their tall, cold glasses dripping with condensation.

As he leans back with glass in hand and straw in mouth, Frankenstein lets out a soft, contented exhale. He looks at his companions, and his lips curl with a glowing warmth: soft sand rolling in dunes and embracing one’s fingers. They are together, nothing more, nothing less, and having a precisely good time.

* * *

Sand, silver with moon-glow, slides off of their shoes with each step as they walk along the beach. The dark water, itself twinkling like the night sky above, constantly murmurs and shushes them with each overlapping wave. They walk and they walk, silently, peacefully, silhouettes adrift. To the passerby, they are merely dark shapes—both someone going somewhere and no one going nowhere.

Ragar looks far into the horizon, the water endless, a great expanse that can swallow him whole without even noticing. Suddenly, he stops, the toes of his shoes digging shallowly into the sand. “I would like to swim,” he breathes. Smoothly, he shrugs off his jacket and places it at his feet at the line separating the wet sand and the dry. Then, he strides into the sea. It is not long before his head dips beneath the waves, and he disappears into the rolling inkiness of ocean.

The water is frigid. It soaks into him, presses against him from all sides, embracing, both intimate and careless. He is nothing and no one to the sea, and it accepts him all the same. He is dragged under by the waves. Closing his eyes, he can only hear the lullaby rumble of the ocean, so vast all around him and weighing down on his chest, and he stays like this for a long time. Salt stings his eyes when he opens them at feeling fingers wrap around his wrist.

Frankenstein drags him to the surface. “What are you doing? Are you trying to drown?” he chastises as they break into the air.

“I will not drown.” Ragar looks up towards the sky. Then he sinks down again and disappears under the water. He knows Frankenstein will follow. He swims swiftly, with the spirit of a small adventure. They sink down and down and further and further away from shore.

In the distance, Raizel stands by the edge of the water, Ragar’s jacket clutched kindly in his hands as he watches and watches.

They swim until they reach the dark, sloping floor of the sea, sand stirring. Ragar reaches out, fingers running over jagged rocks and bits of shells and swaying, coiling fans of algae as he drifts just above the sea floor. He flies over scuttling crabs and small, darting fish, silent and smooth. He watches with youthful interest as a worm pokes out of a hole in the sand, only to withdraw again as they pass. Within the darkness, a minuscule fish zips past his face, and Ragar quickly reaches his hands out to catch it, cupping it within his fingers. He eagerly turns around, meeting Frankenstein’s wide eyed stare that clearly asks him, _What do you have?_

Ragar swims closer, extends his arms, and opens his hands in front of Frankenstein’s face. The fish, a small, ugly, silver thing, darts up and away and disappears. Ragar can see Frankenstein’s lips quirk up in an amused smirk, and he feels rewarded by this enough.

Frankenstein points upwards, indicating his need for air, and they accompany each other to the surface.

He huffs as they tread water. “Have you gotten that out of your system now? Care to head back?” Frankenstein nods towards shore.

Ragar looks over in that direction. They have swum far enough such that Raizel is only a dot in their vision. He nods, then takes off, not even bothering to swim. Ragar sprints back, light footsteps riding on the surface of the sea. Frankenstein follows.

Raizel’s hair gently sways at the wind kicked up by their speed and their sudden stop in front of him. He smiles at them both in greeting, and then his powers whisper around their form, and they are dry again. Raizel holds Ragar’s jacket out to him.

Deeply, Ragar bows as he accepts the article. “Thank you, Sir Raizel.”

Raizel nods.

* * *

Frankenstein’s sleek black Mercedes Benz purrs along the long stretch of road, in the back seats are Ragar and Raizel, and on the speakers is the slow, warm operatic voice of a woman singing to Satie’s “Je Te Veux,” notes long and crystal voice ringing with romance.

Ragar blinks slowly and sleepily.

Raizel turns to him. “Are you tired, Ragar?” he inquires.

Truthfully and strangely, Ragar nods. He knows he should not be tired from such trivial activities as going out to town, eating, and swimming at the beach, but his eyelids remain weighted with a vague, gnawing tiredness.

“You may rest on me.” The moonlight catches the soft curve of his lips as Raizel pats his lap.

“Sir Raizel…” Ragar glances downwards, reserved. “I should not trouble you in such a way. Your kindness thus far has been immense enough already.”

Had Ragar not been an astutely observant person, he would have missed Raizel’s low sigh. “Ragar, rest.” Raizel’s command is simple, and it is simply followed as he lays his head down, long hair falling over Raizel’s knees.

Ragar permits himself to close his eyes. He feels the phantom-soft touch of Raizel’s fingers tracing along his hair.

“Ragar…” Raizel begins, voice saturated with a wondrous whispering quality. “We are very, very glad to have you back…”

As Ragar drifts, he realizes, there is no world in which he does not believe in Sir Raizel precisely and vividly; he tucks those words close to his heart.

* * *

When he wakes, he is on his bed again. Frankenstein is to one side, propped up against the headboard with a pen and a notebook in his hands, busying himself with important looking work. To Ragar’s other side is Raizel, a packet of stapled math papers in hand being intensely scrutinized. They both set their work away when they sense Ragar stir.

“May I ask for the time?” Ragar croaks.

Frankenstein checks his phone. “3:15am.”

Ragar stares up at the ceiling of his darkened room. After a long, considerate silence, he says, “I wish to feel good again.” Another pause. “But I do not know if my body remembers how to do such a thing.”

Frankenstein turns to him. “So you would like us to remind you?”

Slowly, Ragar nods, still staring forward.

The bed dips as Frankenstein leans over him. His body and his lips cover Ragar’s own.

* * *

Ragar’s brows furrow as he rubs himself against Frankenstein’s length. Frankenstein’s thighs slide against him lovingly, beckoning Ragar to take him. There are hands on his body; Raizel’s fingers, delicate and precise, touch and caress his skin. They trace his chest and the line down his back. Raizel kisses the back of Ragar’s neck as he slips his fingers inside.

“Make me feel good…” Ragar whispers, fairy-like. “Make me feel so good, I’ll forget everything…”

“We will…we will…”

* * *

Weakly, vulnerably, Ragar whimpers. He is honest; he has nothing to hide. He lays his pride down tenderly. “I’m…” His cock is still soft in Frankenstein’s hand.

“It is alright...” Raizel coos in his ear. 

Ragar feels him move within him, carefully, regardfully. He knows his companions do not fault him, and he sighs, relieved.

* * *

It comes to him in pieces. He sighs, then he shudders, then he clenches his eyes shut and he moans, shameless, unabashed. Ragar indulges in his sound, forgetful, for a moment, of the Kertia pride and silence. He calls to them, whispers their names like prayer, feeling their bodies on him and in him and around him.

His cock twitches, and he reaches down to slide within Frankenstein, who has been considerately patient with him. They move against each other, heated.

Ragar lowers his head, a dainty whine slips from him. “Thank you...thank you…” he utters, voice full of worship.

* * *

He is shaking, crying out, fingers grasping at Frankenstein’s hips as he moves, feeling Raizel’s own encompassing embrace from behind.

Raizel nuzzles against his neck. “Do you feel good, Ragar?” he presses.

Ragar swallows. “I feel good, I feel good.”

Beneath them, Frankenstein sighs, his eyes lidded and his lips parted in indulgence. Languidly, he reaches out, feeling Ragar’s toned shoulder, then neck, then, he slips his fingers under Ragar’s mask and pressed them to his lips.

Ragar easily accepts them into his mouth, kissing and nipping at them reverently.

Within the haze of good-feeling, his body glowing with it, Ragar slowly makes out Raizel’s words whispered against his ear. He stills. Something leaps and stutters in his chest. Ragar stares down at Frankenstein with wide, innocent eyes, disbelieving eyes, wondrous eyes. Tightly, nervously, he swallows.

Frankenstein peers at him, the blue in his gaze caught by a sliver of moonlight, and it glints like magic. His lips turn up in gentle smile.

Ragar takes a breath, then he bites down. His fangs slice open Frankenstein’s skin; blood trickles in his mouth, and his tongue presses against the closing wound.

Frankenstein withdraws his hand, trailing his wet fingers down the front of Ragar’s mask.

Red glows around them, like flickering instances of life, fireflies here then there then gone. _“We have entered a contract of the soul, bound by blood. Do you consent?”_

Leisurely, Frankenstein leans his head back and closes his eyes. _“Yes, my friend…_ ”

Ragar, overcome, bows until his hair drapes forward onto Frankenstein’s chest, his face hidden. He clutches at Frankenstein and trembles, keening. His body jerks as he cums, a strangled cry caught quietly in his throat.

Raizel slips out of him and soothingly runs his hand down Ragar’s back.

“Thank you...thank you…” Ragar murmurs again and again, his face buried. “Thank you…”

Frankenstein feels tragic, wet droplets on his chest.

* * *

The sun rises with them in the morning. The cool sheet falls off of Ragar’s chest as he wakes and sits up to gaze out of the window. The sky is painted in pastels—blues, pinks, yellows. Slowly, the city wakes as well. A new day approaches.


End file.
